After a small bout this weekend, I want to hear what your horrible food poisoning stories are! Embarrassing? Thrilling? Was it a kitchen ignoring safety protocols or did you trust something that was a little iffy out of the fridge? Let me hear it! I’ll post my own below.
Parents were really into hot wings. They kept ordering them hotter and hotter. It got to the point where my eyes would water being in the same room as them, and I have a high tolerance for spicy food. However, I don’t enjoy the texture of wings and usually got something else, and I remember commenting that this time they smelled “off.” My nose is sharp and something smelled unmistakably rotten. They brushed it aside saying it was probably just the new nuclear fission burn the hair off your tits tropical fuck storm flavor or whatever goofy name they were newly trying out. I was feeling nauseous from the odor so I took my food to my room while they plowed through the pile occasionally pausing to exclaim I was missing out.
I woke up to one of them crashing their way through the house to the bathroom in a blind panic. The door slammed shut, the fan whirred to life and I could hear muttering, gasping and cursing and then the lovely sound of their body forcibly ejecting chicken from both ends. “Goddammit what the hell.” And then a request for a bucket. Stepdad staggered out looking pale as a sheet. “I think I need to go to the ER. Feels like I have knives in my stomach.” My Mom hadn’t succumbed yet, it hit her while she was in the waiting room after she drove him there. They were sick for about a week from salmonella and I was freed from their trufflepig chicken snarfing noises for about a year.
What a picture you painted for us
This is one of the reasons why I keep a solid trash can in each bathroom (not one of those mesh wire ones). It definitely saves you to have a place to vomit when you’re shitting yourself simultaneously lol. Had an episode of “both ends at once” last year!
Ditto. One bout of shitting the toilet while puking into the bathtub ensured all bathroom trash bins are now 1) solid, and 2) comfortable to bear-hug.
I really appreciated how close the sink was to the toilet in my hotel room during my last bout.
A few years ago, I went to a cafe for breakfast, quite regularly. One morning I decided to try their cooked breakfast, quite similar to a Full English. I’m not a fan of sausages, especially cheap ones, so I didn’t think anything of it when I didn’t like the taste.
Over the rest of the day and the next morning, I ate a few different meals, but nothing unusual for me. By about lunch time I was feeling very rough. I was hot and sweaty, and needed the bathroom more often than usual. Now, I have a chronic illness, and between that and the meds, I get upset stomachs fairly often, to the point where I know if it’s serious or not just from experience.
I was starting to feel weak and dizzy, so I knew that it wasn’t normal, and then liquid fire started coming out of both ends. Luckily, my wife was home, and realised that I wasn’t joking about this time being worse, and called my doctor. I ended up in hospital for several days with severe food poisoning, and had to have IV fluids.
Environmental Health were called and quizzed me about everything I’d eaten in the last week, and agreed that it was probably the sausage on my breakfast. They investigated the café, but found no serious problems. Luckily, it looked like whatever was wrong with the sausage only affected me because of my health issues, and didn’t seriously affect anyone else.
I haven’t been back to that café though, just in case.
Anytime there is ground meat in the process like sausages I immediately have a second laser focus on it. You’re probably right that that’s what it was. All it takes is for one of them to be a bit undercooked
I’m not sure if this counts, but dysenteri from drinking contaminated water.
2008 rendered me and my family homeless for 6 or so years. I was a teenager back then.
We were on vacation in Morocco. We were never a rich family, this vacation was something we planned several years in advance. But as we were in Morocco the whole economy collapsed and we were left stranded.
We made it into Spain by selling a bunch of our stuff. Then we were left stranded in Spain. Still realing from the shock of having lost everything, we were living in some plastic tents next to a river. We weren’t allowed to drink the much cleaner water used by the local irrigation, so we took river water and boiled it.
Boiling it apparently wasn’t enough. For a whole week I had snot-like slime with blood clots coming out of both ends. Nothing I ate stayed in or could be digested. Some locals who decided to help us said I looked like a skeleton, like someone from a concentration camp. I felt weaker and weaker, more tired, slept longer until I was basically asleep the entire day. I was told I was dying.
What saved me may have been activated charcoal. My mom had a whole pot of it and was feeding it to me with yogurt.
Unbelievably sick after some seafood at a well-rated place near me.
Dizzy, cramps, shitting.
Stood up after, nauseated. Went to vomit and blacked out, woke up with chipped teeth, bleeding nose, mangled lip, and what would become a black eye whilst lying in a puddle of blood.
Best I can gather is I face planted hard directly onto the edge of the toilet and then the floor. But I honestly don’t know.
Ended up having to go to the ER and getting stitches. Recovery for non drinkable foods was some 1-2 weeks.
Have scars from it.
When I was a kid, working in a mall, there was this french fry place across from us that made AMAZING french fries, with this house made dijon sauce. Just phenomenal.
You could buy a POUND of fries, so the other guys and me on the shift would get a pound and split it.
Except I’d get sick from eating them. Only me, the other guys were fine.
OK, process of elimination…
Fries by themselves? Fine.
Fries w/ ketchup? Fine.
Fries w/ dijon sauce? Horribly sick, puking, the whole bit.Now, you might already know, dijon sauce is made with white wine.
Ok, maybe it’s the alcohol? I don’t drink so… let’s test the theory…
Had A beer. One. Within 30 to 45 minutes I was throwing up everything I had eaten since I was 12. Was sick for 3 days.
Turns out, my liver doesn’t have the enzymes to correctly process alcohol.
Alcohol -> Enzymes -> Acetaldehyde
I have those, Acetaldehyde is what makes you sick when you’re hung over. Cousin to formaldehyde.Acetaldehyde -> Enzymes -> Sugar and water.
Those I’m missing. :(Huh, neat! And by neat I mean, well, not so neat
Had A beer. One. Within 30 to 45 minutes I was throwing up everything I had eaten since I was 12. Was sick for 3 days.
Turns out, my liver doesn’t have the enzymes to correctly process alcohol.
Wow, I’ve never heard of that before.
Apparently common in Asians, weird for me not being Asian.
Working at a studio sound stage we had catered lunches from a 3rd party ( not the meal truck that follows the main unit) one day we had ravioli. It went down without an issues but that evening and all night it was coming out both ends. About 30+ other people all got it bad. Needless to say we switched caterers. The local health authority did an investigation it was so bad.
Yikes, glad they were investigated, there’s no way it should be so bad that 30 people get sick
I started a new job at a nice-ish office, next to a pretty fancy mall. On my 3rd day, my colleagues invited me to lunch at the food court of the mall. A couple hours later, I started getting nauseous and sweaty. Had to rush to the bathroom a couple times, which looking back I was lucky it was coming out of one end instead of two. After the 2nd time, I thought I’d chance it and rush home rather than having to go through another ~2 hours of this at the office. Luckily I lived close to the office back then so I was able to make it home. But in my rush I forgot to tell my manager, just told a coworker sitting near my desk I wasn’t feeling well and left. I emailed my manager that night, telling him that I also wouldn’t be able to make it in the next day. So my very first week at this job, I was only there for 2.5 days before getting sick for 1.5 days. Not the best first impression.
I didn’t know until much later, but my manager told me that he thought I hated the job and was about to quit after a couple days.
1999 - Taco Bell nachos did me in, never ate there or at any Taco Bell ever again.
2004 - Some sushi joint outside of Tacoma, WA, I had the shrimp tempura. Nothing tasted off, but that was my first experience with it coming out of both ends at the same time.
2005 - I was an idiot that thought, for God knows what reason, that the floor of the trailer I called home at the time while stationed in Iraq would remain cold enough to keep a can of Fritos dip cool after I opened it (we did not have a fridge). I was very very wrong and paid the price later the following evening after finishing the dip that day, and that was my second experience with it coming out both ends at the same time. I know it was my own fault, but I still can’t eat those dips to this day.
Fast forward to 2020 - 2023, something is making me randomly ill on a monthly, sometimes weekly basis. I eat a regular meal, 30 minutes later I’m in the bathroom with horrible cramps and shits. It took me nearly 3 years to figure out that I’d become lactose intolerant due to age (this is apparently a common occurrence as you get older). Haven’t had any issues now that I know to avoid most dairy, but I can immediately tell if I’ve unknowingly ingested some, because it feels like I’ve been poisoned 15 minutes into consuming it. Then comes the frantic race to swallow as much Lactaid and lactase pills as I can to calm the storm before it can reach my intestines.
I’ve eaten at Popeyes Chicken restaurants three times in my life, each time at a different location, and all three of those meals gave me food poisoning.
I won’t be going back to Popeyes a fourth time, because I can take a hint.
Woke up with my stomach in knots, figured I ate something bad the previous day. Texted my work group chat and let them know that I would be useless if I showed up, and explained that I think I ate something bad for dinner. They said something along the lines of “no worries, but you’re still gonna have to come in to at least grab the paperwork for staying home for a day.” Annoyed, I got a ride to work and went to go do the formalities and explained that my boss had already given me the go ahead to stay home, I just needed the paperwork. First guy I talked to had no issue just writing it up and sending me on my way, but when he stepped away for a second I got asked some questions by one of his coworkers who told me “we have to give you a check up first to determine if you actually have to stay home.” She checked my stomach for pain and listened to it make some noises, then decided I was just constipated and gave me something to drink to help. First guy still wrote the paperwork up for me, and I got to go home, stomach in even worse situation and I spent nearly 2 hours on the toilet before I felt safe enough to go lay down and slept the rest of the day away.
(And yes I’m well aware that it’s atypical to get a checkup by your workplace, this was a weird and terrible place to work. Glad I got outta there.)
Wow, they suck. Also weird to have to come in to take a sick day.
We have high standards for American Chinese food. There was this place where we used to live in the food was great. Not everything they made came out of a bag, and even the things that did come out of a bag had absolutely superior sauces. I don’t know exactly what they did but whatever it was it was better heads and tails than anything else around here.
We ordered our regular dishes one day. A few hours later we were exploding out of both ends. Was it them? was lunch? Who knows? We went about our regular business and two weeks later ordered the same regiment. A few hours later we again were exploding out of both ends.
The puking wasn’t all that bad but the raw acid diarrhea and the massive cramps were just insane.
This was a pretty bad scenario because of the time we lived in a house with one bathroom.
We never ordered from there again. They had this really great iced tea It took me ages to figure out how to replicate it. It ended up being like 14 to 1 regular sweetened black tea to Earl Gray, plus a splash of lemon.
Oof, I’m sorry you lost your favorite place :/
It was either the shrimp or the bean sprouts in the food court Pad Thai. I was visiting my S.O. in Canada and wound up in a 3-day war with food poisoning. I could not stop puking and shitting. I shit so much acidic death juice that my asshole was in absolute agony and never cooled down. It was like someone had fileted and cauterized my rectum. I couldn’t even sit on the couch properly. Fortunately, her sectional was old and had collapsed in on itself in the very corner. I sat in this corner, right on top of the collapsed portion. It was perfect for supporting my body without making contact with the seat of my pants. I sat in this corner for three days watching weird YouTube videos about Centralia and other phenomena, while intermittently hopping up to puke and shit and fart. I was so fucking sick. I felt like I was going to die.
My mother made rice in the morning and forgot to put it in the fridge, it was a hot summer day.
When my brother came back from school he decided to eat the rice, not knowing how long it was out. A few bites in he notes the odd taste, nothing major but noticeable, his solution? Add more sauce to drown the weird taste!
Fast forward about an hour, now my brother is puking and shitting it and everything else that was inside of him. So far this is pretty normal right? It can happen to anyone at least once and it wasn’t anything crazy since after one puking/shitting session he felt better and was mostly over it.
About 2 hours later my father comes home, this man does not throw away food as long as it isn’t covered in mold (this means that small amounts of mould are okay to cut out and eat the rest, thia is the level we are talking about) and just to clarify, we had no food shortage or money issues, he is just unwilling to throw away food.
For some reason nobody threw away the rice yet and it was still on the kitchen counter. My father sees the rice and we all immediately warn him that my brother got food poisoning from it and he should not eat it, of course my father, the genius, decides that my brother just has a weak stomach. He takes a bite, notices the weird taste and you guessed it… Drowns it in sauce!
As expected about an hour later he had a similar puking/shitting session, and learned absolutely nothing.
“Fried rice syndrome” is a thing. Room temp rice is a good place for the bacteria to grow and it’s heat resistant. Once in your guts it continues to grow on food in there too.
Not embarrassing or thrilling, but way back when I still ate meat, I’m pretty sure Waffle House tried to kill me with a bad batch of Bert’s chili. At least, that was the featured odor/flavor in all my bodily effluvium (which was copious!) in the several succeeding days. I didn’t die but I do remember wishing I was dead. The experience turned me into a Waffle House skeptic and shortly thereafter, a vegetarian.
In high school we were hosting a marching band competition for schools a little smaller than ours. The band students helped work the whole event, so we were outside running around the football field all day.
Eventually, we got to lunch, and myself and friends ran over to Arby’s. I’ve never really enjoyed coffee in my life, but a friend convinced me to try the JaMocha Shake. “It’s so good,” they said. So anyway, after a shake and roast beef sandwiches, we go back to the football field to help out in the afternoon.
An hour or two later, something in my gut started turning sideways. I was sitting high up in the stands with friends, waiting for a band to finish their performance. Suddenly, it all came up. Roast beef and coffee shake. All over the stands…and dripping down onto who ever was unlucky enough to be below. At this field, the concessions were under the stands. Oof.
So I ended up going home, of course. But I know that a friend of mine unfortunately had to clean it up. Poor girl.
Oof, Roast Beef and Mocha… Another lesson learned. Don’t trust anything from a place that doesn’t usually make them. Not always for food safety but also just quality. Frappacinos from fast food, or a burger from a coffee joint. Order what they’re good at. (Sorry sounds like I’m telling, but I’m reflecting back on my old life lessons I learned the hard way)